Whose idea was Work Harder Day anyway? All levels of management and all of the parasite investor class, perhaps. Checkiday.com tells us that:

Many of us go through life working hard and putting a lot of effort into our jobs and hobbies, and into making our dreams come true. But isn't there always a little more that we could do? Couldn't we focus a little more, or put in a little more effort or time? Work Harder Day answers those questions in the affirmative and gives us the opportunity to step it up a notch and work harder.

That's just completely sick and misguided. If there was a real personal reward, such as with a hobby or creative activity perhaps, though, of course, that way lies fatigue, error, mistakes and injuries, not to mention all of those stress related mental and physical conditions. But on the job? We live in a society ruled by a perverted and erroneous ideology which holds that capital is the source of all productivity and that, accordingly, all gains, rewards, surplus and income should belong to capital and those who provide it. Work extra hard and your boss and their boss and their boss might get bonuses, and you'll get zip shit. Always and a day the work flows down and the rewards flow up. Regardless of the bassackwards inversion of the rewards for effort and production, most reasonable people already try to do the best they can and should not be encouraged to harm themselves physically and psychologically by trying to do ever more and more. That way lies madness, pure and simple

So the US House, in 1915, decided not to even try to get Women's suffrage aka the right to vote. Well over a century after the nation's founding the oligarchs and their servants in Congress still didn't see fit to share the franchise with Women. Labor may very well get the short end of the stick, but women in this country for sure get the absolutely shortest end. The US Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, and women didn't get a Constitutional "right to vote" until August 18 1920, a bit over 132 years. Despite this concession from the ruling class, they are nonetheless still not truly free. They still have not been granted the right to self-ownership, the most fundamental of all human rights. They are still not allowed to make their own medical and health related decisions. We must all always remember that so long as they are not completely free we are none of us completely free. We should not permit it to take another 132 years before they are allowed to be free from the dictates of the assorted twisted sacerdotes who insist that they remain in thrall.

LBJ inherited Viet Nam from Kennedy, who inherited it from Ike and Dulles, who inherited it from the French. LBJ was generally not a fool, but he seemingly learned nothing from history during the twelve years between Dien Bien Phu and his 1966 declaration that we should stay there, in effect, until we too were driven out. Perhaps an odious bit of the alphabet somehow kept him blinded and something turned off the part of his mind that, deep down, know that people have a right to be free and that all peoples have the right to self-determination. Ike sent us in to prevent the elections mandated by the Geneva accords because he knew that the right wing authoritarian cabal which has seized power over the southern fraction of the country would lose any fair election. This then became the routine preferred option and political policy of the US and remains so, failure after failure after failure. Many US supported dictators have fallen by the wayside, yet we still don't get the picture.

On this day in history:

1616 – The city of Belém, Brazil was founded on the Amazon River delta by Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco.

1848 – The Palermo rising took place in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society was formed in London.

1911 – The University of the Philippines College of Law was established.

1915 – The US House of Representatives rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to require states to give women the right to vote.

1932 – Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the United States Senate.

1942 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board.

1966 – Lyndon B. Johnson stated that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until so-called Communist aggression there was ended.

1970 – Biafra capitulated, ending the Nigerian Civil War.

1971 – The Harrisburg Seven: Rev. Philip Berrigan and five other activists were indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C. This was a failed sting typical of the era.

1976 – The United Nations Security Council voted 11–1 to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate (without voting rights).

1990 – A seven-day pogrom broke out against the Armenian civilian population of Baku, Azerbaijan, during which Armenians were beaten, tortured, murdered, and expelled from the city.

1991 – An act of the U.S. Congress authorized the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait without actually declaring war.

1998 – Nineteen European nations agreed to forbid human cloning. Ethics, who knew?

2004 – The world's largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, made its maiden voyage.

2005 – Deep Impact launched from Cape Canaveral

2006 – A stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day at the Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, killed at least 362 Muslim pilgrims.

2010 – An earthquake in Haiti killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people and destroying much of Port-au-Prince.

Some people who were born on this day:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

~~ Edmund Burke

1591 – Jusepe de Ribera, painter
1597 – François Duquesnoy, sculptor and educator
1724 – Frances Brooke, author and playwright
1729 – Edmund Burke, philosopher, academic, and politician
1799 – Priscilla Susan Bury, botanist
1822 – Étienne Lenoir, engineer, designed the internal combustion engine
1876 – Jack London, novelist and journalist
1884 – Texas Guinan, entertainer and bootlegger
1892 – Mikhail Gurevich, engineer and businessman
1904 – Mississippi Fred McDowell, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1905 – Tex Ritter, actor and singer
1907 – Sergei Korolev, colonel and engineer (died 1966)
1920 – James Farmer, n activist and politician, co-founded Congress of Racial Equality
1923 – Ira Hayes, marine who raised the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima
1926 – Ray Price, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1928 – Ruth Brown, R&B singer, songwriter, and actress
1930 – Glenn Yarbrough, singer and actor
1940 – Ronald Shannon Jackson, drummer and composer
1941 – Long John Baldry, singer, songwriter, and voice actor
1942 – Bernardine Dohrn, domestic terrorist, political activist, and academic
1944 – Cynthia Robinson, R&B trumpet player and singer
1946 – George Duke, keyboard player, composer, and educator
1949 – Haruki Murakami, novelist, short-story writer, and essayist
1975 – Jason Freese, saxophonist, songwriter, and producer

Some people who died on this day:

Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.

~~ Nevil Shute

1665 – Pierre de Fermat, mathematician and lawyer
1899 – Hiram Walker, businessman
1960 – Nevil Shute, engineer and author
1976 – Agatha Christie, crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright
2003 – Dean Amadon, ornithologist and author
2003 – Maurice Gibb, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
2006 – Pablita Velarde, Santa Clara Pueblo Native American painter
2007 – Alice Coltrane, pianist and composer
2008 – Max Beck, intersex advocate
2013 – Precious Bryant, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
2022 – Ronnie Spector, singer
2023 – Lisa Marie Presley, singer, songwriter

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Internatiional French Onion Soup Day
National Glazed Doughnut Day
National Pharmacist Day
Work Harder Day

TAGS

Today's Tunes

Work Harder Day

Womens' Right to Vote

LBJ calls for yet more war

Jack London

Mississippi Fred McDowell,

Tex Ritter

Ira Hayes

Ray Price

Ruth Brown

Glen Yarborough

Long John Baldry

Cynthia Robinson

Maurice Gibb

Alice Coltrane

Precious Bryant

Ronnie Spector

Bonus Work Song

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Work Harder Day, Womens Suffrage, Viet Nam, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Tex Ritter, Ira Hayes, Ruth Brown, Maurice Gibb, Ronnie Spector, Precious Bryant